‘MADZE’ RESTORES SOME PRIDE IN SIHLANGU’S JERSEY

My dearest Sihlangu coach… Writing open letters is one of my sentimental hates but after hearing the news of how the national team, Sihlangu, under your guidance, fought gallantly to record a credible 1-all draw against the ‘Brave Warriors’, I could not help but rush to brutalise this laptop keyboard to sing your praises.

It is besides the fact that this open letter is from one Buccaneer to another.
I am hopelessly aware your team did not win the game – your brave soldiers played a draw. I am also cognisant of the fact that while you were exchanging friendly fire with the ‘Brave Warriors’, more serious football nations were engaged in serious competitions like the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2015 qualifiers. Ours was just an irrelevant distraction to the real football action. In fact in the real world of football, our result or game was meaningless, insignificant, worthless and inconsequential- in that order. It was a game only meant for the FIFA rankings, which may or may not, be the right yardstick to judge the football prowess of any footballing nation.

But for a team or country where winning any game or even scoring a goal has become as scarce as a paraffin advert or as my naughty friend always says during our rende-zvous weekends, “you are likely to find Mother Teresa twerking in front of the mirror in a bikini than Sihlangu winning an official match,” – any results besides a loss is worth celebrating.

You see six years of supporting a team of chronic underachievers is draining even to the most patriotic Swazi. As a Buccaneer, you know how emotionally draining it was to wait eight years for the league trophy to come to the Parktown offices. So I am preaching to the converted here ‘Madze’. People care about a winning team. They rally behind it. Your record thus far has broken the cycle of misery. We are slowly but surely getting rid of the psychological baggage. We can move on from here. Your boys have relocated their mojo.

A win in the next official match at home will obviously boost our collective ego as a nation. Your team seems eager to beat the culture of insularity that has always been part of Swazi football.
 ‘Madze’, this is not just a journalistic imperative of accentuating the positive but your record of three wins; four draws and two losses in nine games Sihlangu has played under your watchful eye is the best record by all the foreign coaches combined.

Mind you, those coaches, who claimed to have more degrees than thermometers earned telephone number salaries but left us swimming in the same pool of problems. You were not a cheap option (former coach and now Bafana Bafana coach Shakes Mashaba hates this statement with purple passion) but you were the logical option. Your salary compared to your predecessor whose name I cannot type here because my laptop would crash, is a drop in an ocean.  
In a country where we have thousands of people who believe they can coach Sihlangu better than you, I must say you were brave to take over the job. I have been eager to warn you that at Sihlangu there are so many desperate men whose hobby is to stick knives in the back of their own colleagues that you may as well declare yourself a cutlery stand. That’s why the Sihlangu coaching job is a poisoned chalice. But unlike all the foreign coaches we have had, you have taken to the job with calm, measured and in a dignified manner – more like a fish to water.

I have grown to respect you for your honesty, humility and passion for your job. I find it strange though how you have managed to juggle your job as a teacher and being Sihlangu coach.
I have received some complaints from parents whose kids go to your school of how your continued absence is affecting their studies.
I hope you can address this and find a common ground because nobody knows better than you how important education is. Let the kids not suffer for your two demanding jobs preference. I digress.

Belief

Your team is not world beaters – far from it. But the recent spate of results has brought back belief. Your boys have brought back pride into what had become more of a pride-less bunch of losers who played without direction or care in the world.
Their bipolar quality has been bad for our hearts. But now the emotional owners of the club are becoming more sympathetic to this team because you are restoring pride into the Sihlangu jersey – nice and quietly. Before I am accused of being a purveyor of mediocrity, toasting a draw as if you were playing World Champions Germany yet it was just equally hopeless Namibia, let me state here and now that you still have a long way to go.

The CHAN, AFCON and World Cup qualifiers next year will put your coaching credentials to the test. But for now, I say, without fear of contradiction, so far, so good. For now, I am saying you are bringing back confidence and belief to this team which has been as dead as a dodo for far too long.
Now, even the boys can look themselves in the mirror again. Yours is about setting out on a new journey, not retracing the steps of a tortured route march.

I am proud of you ‘Madze’ and the onus is on your bosses, the silk-suited souls at the FA offices to start thinking beyond the doorsteps of Sigwaca House and invest in you as a coach. I know, given more time, like that great team we both support in South Africa, you will defy the odds and achieve the unthinkable in no time.
Continue with your good work of restoring pride into the national team jersey.  Yours in Pandora’s Box

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